Tag Archives: attack another Arab

We are now the world’s finest exemplar of both moral and strategic incoherence. After sending Sec of State John Kerry out to sell the moral case for immediately attacking Syria with what was probably the most passionate speech of his life, Obama cut Kerry’s legs off by saying, in effect, “Oh it can wait awhile. Let me offload some of the consequences of acting or not acting on congress. After all, they were foolish enough to demand it.”

Meanwhile, Assad can hide valuable assets in civilian areas and Iran can believe we are not a serious nation. Israel can assume that if they are attacked, we will, with great resolution, immediately convene a focus group. Or rather, given the way congress is likely to act, we’ll convene an unfocused group.

Our genius plan, that both Kerry and Obama have shared, is to send cruise missiles to punish Assad without toppling him or changing the outcome of the civil war/proxy war. So, our policy is to attack a nation that hasn’t attacked us, taken our people hostage or destroyed our properties. Our policy is to attack another Arab country, another Muslim country. Our policy is to launch an unprovoked act of war without the support of NATO or the UN because…because Assad is a really bad man who kills his own people.

Assad is a really bad man who kills his own people. Assad almost certainly did use chemical gas to kill his own people. We have somehow conflated proving that he used the gas with this justifying an act of war against him. Thus, the question before congress seems to be; If we prove to your satisfaction that he did it, will you please let us punish him?

Put aside, for a moment, that the list of bad, cruel and violent leaders who slaughter their own people is pretty long and the 100,000 he killed in the conventional manner got little response from us. The critical issue is how we calculate the upside of a limited attack against the downside? The upside seems at best to be that he will stop using chemical weapons and that Iran will take us seriously. Both of these are unlikely in my view. The downside, on the other hand, is unlimited.

Assad could decide he has to use the chemical weapons or lose them. Hezbollah could open fire with 25,000 rockets aimed at Israel. Assad could lob shells into Jordan. Iran could send more volunteers to aid him and the Saudis could be drawn in to save their fellow Sunnis. The usually risk-averse Saudis are the least likely players in this scenario from hell.